Radiologicals Safety for Redteaming

What you'll do

This is the general intake for Mercor's radiological safety red-team panel. It gathers the five profiles Mercor also recruits through separate role listings into one ad. The panel's question is whether frontier AI models can tell a radiation professional's routine question from one aimed at misusing radioactive material, answering the first fully and declining the second. Refusing an ordinary dose question counts as a failure just as much as helping with harm.

Each task:

1. Write a single-turn prompt from your specialty, labelled benign, dual-use or adversarial
2. Judge the model's response against a defined policy standard
3. Write the reference answer, with the technical reasoning behind it

The umbrella ad sets one common bar across all five profiles: responsibility for radioactive material. Custody, licensing, security or response experience is what qualifies you, whichever seat you fill.

Who fits

The five backgrounds the ad names, each with its own listing:

• Radiation Safety Officer on a broad-scope licence
• Health physicist at a DOE site or national laboratory
• Source security or vulnerability assessment specialist
• Radiological emergency response specialist
• Nuclear medicine physicist or cyclotron RSO

Red-teaming experience is preferred. The work is writing-intensive: every judgment needs a rationale a non-specialist can follow, and Mercor asks for a writing sample or link.

Which listing to apply through

The ad does not say whether this listing and the five role-specific listings share a pool. If you fit one profile cleanly, the specific listing describes your background more precisely. If your career spans two (an RSO who also ran emergency planning, for instance), this general listing may be the better door. Pay and terms are identical either way.

What it pays

$65–75 per task, Mercor's published figure, matching all five role listings. Task length is not stated. The listing shows 8 hires this month, fewer than the energetic materials and nuclear umbrella listings, which suggests either a smaller intake or a slower fill.

No payment schedule or visa eligibility is published.

Before you apply

No classified or export-controlled information, and nothing covered by an NDA or prepublication review. Declare any such obligations; Mercor says it will scope the work accordingly.

Mercor briefs experts before sustained work on misuse scenarios and lets you pause or step away without penalty.

Worth knowing

Good:

• One door for anyone with real custody, licensing, security or response responsibility
• Actively hiring, with 8 hires this month
• No country restriction published

Less good:

• Unclear how this listing relates to the five role-specific ones
• Per-task pay with no stated task length
• Payment terms not on the listing

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote contract, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. The role-specific listings: Radiation Safety Officer, Health Physicist, Source Security Specialist, Emergency Response Specialist and Nuclear Medicine Physicist / Cyclotron RSO. See Mercor.